Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Music: The Death of Déagol
This instrumental introduces the “fathers of the fathers of the Stoors”, the character of Sméagol/Gollum, and the death of Déagol at the hands of Sméagol after discovering the Ring. During this instrumental, I introduce a new percussion motif to represent Stoors and related hobbit-kind, along with referencing previously used themes to create a complex musical landscape.
Stoors Claves
I created a unique rhythm to play underneath the instrumentals associated with Stoors, the hobbit-kind who once lived among Men. The rhythm can be played by any pair of handheld percussion instruments. Because I compose in MuseScore and select from programmed instrument options, I chose claves, a pair of wooden sticks that originated in Afro-Caribbean folk music, especially in Cuba. Music ethnologists debate over the origins of claves, as similar instruments can be found in western Africa and South America. Etymologists believe the term came to American English in 1928 from American Spanish with its origins in the Latin word clavis meaning “key”. However, the connection between the musical instrument and unlocking tool seems unclear.
A similar instrument is the bones, originally a pair of rib bones from an animal. I first discovered bone playing in the Museum of Fine Art Boston, where a portrait by William Sidney Mount depicts an unnamed musician cheerily playing the bones. While modern viewers may find the painting somewhat stereotypical, as Mount was a white artist painting African American musicians in the mid-19th century, the man in the picture wears a fairly standard middle-class outfit and sits in a home with nice furnishings, including a chair, side table, pitcher, and glass of water. I like his outfit so much that it inspired my illustrations of musicians of the Shire. Tolkien likely would have been aware of the bones from a different source. This instrument is mentioned in “The Hunting of the Snark” published by Lewis Carroll in 1876. In this poem, the music is a symptom of the mental collapse of the Banker after being attacked by an elusive creature called a bandersnatch:
“Down he sank in a chair—ran his hands through his hair—
And chanted in mimsiest tones
Words whose utter inanity proved his insanity,
While he rattled a couple of bones.”
If claves and bone are not your style, consider spoons, played in many European folk music traditions. In the Francophonic cultures of Canada, including Quebecois and Acadian, spoons are played alongside fiddle and guitar. In Russia, lozhki are painted spoons traditionally played by peasants from at least the 18th century in folk bands along with accordions and balalaikas or Russian stringed instruments that come in a very wide range of sizes. In Turkey, spoon dances or kaşık oyunu are traditionally performed by women during weddings.
The Stoor claves beat a specific rhythm. In 4/4 time, the claves strike a quarter note and then have a quarter rest, repeating this pattern twice before hitting a quarter note length triplet and two eighth notes. This abrupt change in rhythm creates a sense of unbalance, driving the percussion section forward.
Themes & Motifs
Many of the themes and motifs in this section should be familiar to the viewer. The piece begins with the “River Gladden” motif that first appeared in “The Story of the Ring”. Rolling half note length triplets in the oboe, clarinet, and bassoon play a D Major arpeggio, as the instrumental begins in the key of D Major. Supporting the woodwinds is a D Major chord in the treble viols played for six beats and beginning every other measure. I chose the 12th century viol over its modern relative, the violin, to indicate the ancient nature of the music, just as I use viols when representing other fantasy medieval cultures like the Elves.
On top of this repeating instrumental, the hobbit-kind chant a song using a 5-part D7 chord: D-F-A-C-D. They use the exact wording found in the text to describe Sméagol’s different personality from the rest of his family. Later, Sméagol hums his theme song, here appearing in D Major. The dotted eighth note and sixteenth note is snappy and light, much higher energy than the calmly flowing river, and similar in rhythm to Bilbo’s song, “The Road Goes Ever On”. Both characters are interest in discovery and exploration, but their lives take very different turns.
The key signature modulates down from D Major to C Major as Déagol and Sméagol arrive in Gladden Fields, although the rhythms and pitch sequences remain the same. Trouble is first heard when the two note sequence for “One Ring” (E and B), first heard in “The Epigraph”, plays in the flute. The tempo accelerates from a steady 120 BPM to a frantic 160 BPM as if approaching rapids in the river. The “One Ring” sequence becomes interspersed with “Smeagol’s Theme”, now played in A minor. Similarly, the woodwinds chord sequence shifts from C Major to A minor. The C major chord in the viols is warped into a G minor 7 (Gm7), the seventh chord (♭VIIm7) of A minor, creating a dissonant sound. The quintuplet beats indicating the “Morgoth’s Ring / Sauron” themes gradually enter with the anvil, snare drum, cymbal, sand blocks, and timpani.
“Sméagol’s Theme” drops out of the flute, and the “One Ring” sequence adopts the quintuplet rhythm found in the percussion, indicating that Sméagol’s will is nearly subsumed by the Ring. The notes G and B-flat are added to the “One Ring” sequence to create an E diminished triad (E°), or as I like to call it, “extra minor”. The competing chords aren’t as dissonant as they could be, as the chords share multiple notes: Gm7 and E° share G and B♭, while Am and E° share E. This chord runs to the end of the scene until the cut to black.
Listen to the instrumental: